Sacagawea - Name

Name

A long-running controversy has surrounded the correct spelling, pronunciation, and etymology of the woman's name. However, linguists working on Hidatsa since the 1870s have always considered the name's Hidatsa etymology essentially indisputable. The name is a compound of two common Hidatsa nouns, cagáàga 'bird' and míà 'woman'. The compound is written as Cagáàgawia 'Bird Woman' in modern Hidatsa orthography, and pronounced (/m/ is pronounced between vowels in Hidatsa). The double /aa/ in the name indicates a long vowel and the diacritics a falling pitch pattern. Hidatsa is a pitch-accent language that does not have stress, therefore in the Hidatsa pronunciation all syllables in are pronounced with roughly the same relative emphasis. However, most English speakers perceive the accented syllable (the long /aa/) as stressed. In faithful rendering of the name Cagáàgawia to other languages, it is advisable to emphasize the second, long syllable, not the last, as is common in English.

The name has several spelling traditions in English. The origin of each tradition is described in the following sections.